Trails and Tribulations: Confessions of a Wilderness Pathfinder

By Hap Wilson and Ingrid Zschogner

In an age when "survival" shows permeate the media, noted northern traveller Hap Wilson shares accounts of his lifelong involvement with wilderness living within the Canadian Shield. Wilson knows better than most how to live in the woods. As park ranger, canoe guide, outfitter, trail builder, and environmental activist, he learned from firsthand experience that nature can neither be beaten or tamed.

Trails and Tribulations takes the reader on a journey with the author through natural settings ranging from austere to mysterious and breathtaking. Contents include animal attacks, bush fires, the threat of hypothermia, and vision-quest sites, to name but a few.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Apr 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9781770705029

Hap Wilson

A self-taught artist and photographer, Hap Wilson has travelled over sixty thousand kilometres by canoe and snowshoe, and embarked on more than three hundred wilderness expeditions. He is one of North America's best-known wilderness guides and canoeists, and has been building sustainable trails for more than thirty years. He is also the co-founder of the environmental group Earthroots. He lives in Rosseau, Ontario. for more information, please visit Hap's website at www.eskakwa.ca.

Book preview

TRAILS and TRIBULATIONS

On the water trail, time is measured not by the hands of a clock, but by distance accomplished without thinking about it.

TRAILS and TRIBULATIONS

CONFESSIONS OF A WILDERNESS PATHFINDER

HAP WILSON

Illustrated by Hap Wilson and Ingrid Zschogner.

NATURAL HERITAGE BOOKS

A MEMBER OF THE DUNDURN GROUP

TORONTO

Copyright © Hap Wilson, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Copy-edited by Allison Hirst

Designed by Courtney Horner

Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Wilson, Hap, 1951-

Trails and tribulations : confessions of a wilderness pathfinder / by Hap Wilson ; illustrated by Hap Wilson and Ingrid Zschogner.

ISBN 978-1-55488-397-4

1. Wilson, Hap, 1951-. 2. Outdoor life--Canadian Shield.

3. Environmentalists--Canada--Biography. 4. Travelers--Canadian Shield--Biography. 5. Park rangers--Canada--Biography. 6. Outfitters (Outdoor recreation)--Canada--Biography. 7. Canadian Shield--Description and travel. I. Zschogner, Ingrid II. Title. III. Title: Confessions of a wilderness pathfinder.

GV191.52.W54 A3 2009 796.5092 C2009-900293-0

1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09

We acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

www.dundurn.com

Published by Natural Heritage Books

A Member of The Dundurn Group

To Alexa and Christopher Wilson — two gentle spirits who light my way through the shadows; and to Ingrid, whose energy is matched only by her talent and beauty

TABLE of CONTENTS

Introduction

PART ONE:

A Trail Less Travelled

1 Confessions of a Park Ranger

2 Confessions of a Wilderness Outfitter

3 Confessions of a Wilderness Guide

4 Confessions of a Trailbuilder

5 Confessions of an Environmental Activist

PART TWO:

Journey’s End: Six Ways to Die on the Trail

6 Hypothermia

7 Errant Maps

8 Getting Lost

9 Animal Attack

10 Ineptitude

11 Bush Planes

PART THREE:

Pathway to Nirvana: The Spirit of Place

12 Bloodvein

13 Thunderhouse

14 River of Fire

15 River of Stone

16 Place of the Huge Rock Lake

17 Chee-Bay-Jing

Afterword

About the Author

About the Illustrator

To know that one’s trail possessions are packed easily in two loads over the shoulders lightens the burden of care and the want of excess.

INTRODUCTION

One smooth path led into the meadow, and here the little folk congregated; one swept across the pond, where skaters were darting about like water-bugs; and the third, from the very top of the hill, ended abruptly at a rail fence on the high bank above the road …

— Louisa May Alcott, Jack and Jill, 1880

As a kid growing up in rural southern Ontario, I was privy to the numerous trails surrounding the Summit View Golf and Country Club, about forty-eight kilometres north of Toronto. The trails date back to the 1920s, and when my parents bought our house — a heavily treed lot across from the golf course — one of the old ski trails passed through our property. silver birch trail was stamped on a diamond-shaped piece of tin, nailed, of course, to a silver birch tree. The tree had grown considerably since the sign was nailed up and was pushing the tin outwards, like butterfly wings, and the printed name was barely discernable. The trail led away from the driveway, not far from the front door of the house, and up a flight of stone steps built to adjust to the steep slope of land that had been bulldozed away some years past.

Up until I had moved there from the outskirts of Toronto, my life had been confined to paved suburban streets, sidewalks, and the school tarmac. And there was the monthly walk to the Willow Theatre on Saturdays where we would watch double-feature Buck Rogers films for fifty cents, stopping along the way to explore the numerous housing developments evolving out of what vacant land was left. Luckily, we had our grandmother’s cottage to escape to in the summertime. Here there were trees, at least, beneath which there were acorns scattered on the ground to collect, low-branched maples to climb and build forts in, and pine trees that proffered fallen dead sticks to brandish as swords and provide kindling wood for the cottage stove.

Across from the cottage road was the dark forest; impenetrable, menacing, glowering, yet strangely beautiful and beckoning. There were no trails to follow so we kids didn’t go there. When my father started producing survival films for the Department of Lands and Forests in the late 1950s, he had hired a Native woodsman from the Curve Lake Reserve to work on the film with him. His name was Charlie, and everything he did was magic. He was the first real Indian I had met, and he was not at all like the ones on television. When he wasn’t working with my father on the sets, Charlie would spend time with my brother and me, showing us how to paddle a canoe, light a campfire, boil water in a birchbark bowl, and most importantly, how to blaze a trail where there was none. He told us that most people look but don’t see and that’s how they get lost in the woods. Being lost terrified me.

Charlie took us across the cottage road and into the woods to look for a stand of birch trees some distance away. He went about marking trees with a small axe. A blaze, he would say in quiet commentary "on both sides of the tree so you can find your way back, wassakwaigaso mitig. He blazed the trees with a deft swipe of the axe, one downward cut, then a right-angled chop to sever the wood chip, revealing the white meat underneath. Sometimes the trees would bleed sap, which was a good thing Charlie had said, because it protected the tree from infection, like a scab over a cut. He blazed the trees at fifty-foot intervals, and when there were no trees, just saplings, he broke one and bent it in the direction he was going (or returning), leaving it pointing like an arrow. Charlie said we’d never get lost as long as we kept our eyes open and remembered what we’d seen, and turned around every so often to see what it would look like on our way back out. Look at the clouds! Charlie exclaimed. Feel the wind, he would say with a sweeping motion of his big hand. They’ll talk to you and show you the path."

Look. See. Pay attention to detail —the art of seeing. The outdoors was like a classroom; you didn’t get your knuckles rapped with the pointer when you weren’t paying attention, but the natural world did hold you accountable for your actions. I was only six years old then but the time spent with old Charlie, the Anishnabe woodsman, triggered something in my own head that stuck — a bit of old magic that helped me peer into a whole different world.

The best thing about moving north out of the city and into the country was the collection of trails near our house, like the Silver Birch Trail, and it didn’t take long for me to explore every one within the first week. I learned that there were absolutely no boundaries, that there would always be a trail somewhere that would lead to someplace I hadn’t been before. And when there was no visible trail, I would remember what old Charlie had told me — that the path always appears ahead of you as soon as you put one foot in front of the other.

This anthology of stories is about the wilderness trail, both in the physical sense and, perhaps, as a metaphor for a different path of life that leads us away from the familiar. A trail always leads somewhere, regardless of whether it was human or animal in design. A beaver path up a slope, which I have often mistaken for a portage trail, usually ends abruptly no more than fifty metres from the shore. To the beaver, the trail terminates at a copse of prized birch trees, and the clear path back to the water means a quick retreat from predators — a wolf, perhaps. For me, carrying a heavy canoe and pack over my shoulders, it was a mild annoyance, but it served its singular purpose well for the beaver.

Deer paths through the forest often take advantage of gutways, bench-cut ledges, and areas of light undercover; basically, following the path of least resistance. I have often built trails along deer runs for this very reason; however, unlike the deer, skiers and hikers do not require a clear, straight trail for the purpose of escaping predators.

In the low-lying wetlands, moose will leave a visible trail between ponds and lakes, evidenced by hoof-trough, browse-cuts on willow and alder shrubs, and bark-rubs from antler and teeth marks. These trails are often used as portages and have never required the hand of man to keep clear, save for the occasional removal of a deadfall tree brought down by wind, age, or snow load.

Within the treeline areas of the Far North, caribou leave trails with little apparent care for linear predisposition. Pathways often braid in and out of spruce groves but eventually do arrive at a common river-crossing point or funnel onto a sandy esker — the latter being a sand ridge left by retreating glaciers that now serves as an elevated trailway for both caribou and their predators, the tundra wolf and man. The Sayisi Dene of northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, unlike the woodland Nations to the south and east who travelled by canoe, followed the sinewy eskers on foot and crossed rivers at strategic locations, usually in pursuit of the caribou. They would bury their dead atop esker trails because it was the only place the summer sun would thaw the permafrost deep enough to enable them to excavate a hole. Thus the trail defined the life essence of the Dene in finite terms — their struggle for survival oftentimes amorphous, dependent wholly on the harmony and reliability of the trail.

The Ojibwa, or Anishnabek, of the eastern woodlands used an interconnecting webwork of summer and winter trails called the nastawgan. These ancient trails still unite heart and soul with the spirit of the landscape. And it is with this landscape that most people are vaguely familiar and where a great majority of adventure-seekers find recreation and solace. And yet there are those who continue to defy the natural order of things. Nature — the wilderness — in all its resplendent beauty and magnetism remains intractable. Entering its realm with an imperious attitude shrouds our ability to enjoy fully the benefits celebrated in an untouched world. Living harmoniously is unachievable and life becomes an act of mere survival … and survival is for angry people.

Survival is the art of staying alive. Whether we are in our familiar environment or attempting to find connection with Nature, survival knowledge is essential but not necessarily the mantra that leads us to nirvana. Survival skills comprise but a small percentage of what is actually needed to live comfortably in the wilderness. It all depends on what trail you want to follow; the path is not always a clear one.

There are many ways to die in the wilderness. In an age where survival shows dominate the airwaves, we tend to fixate on our relationship with Nature in a purely combative way. The true meaning of the art of survival and ultimately our aspirations of living comfortably within the confines of Nature, of wilderness, are muddled by our perceptions as defined by television and its hedonistic personalities. Not that I have all the answers. I do, nonetheless, have stories to share that may help to affirm that Nature can be neither beaten nor tamed — that our place in the wilderness is simply a logical adjustment to a simpler lifestyle. The correlation between the wilderness trail and our actions eventually becomes our destiny.

The simple reward of the day is a beautiful sunset and sheer exhaustion.

PART ONE

A TRAIL LESS TRAVELLED

The trail through the forest was rough and long unused. In spots the mosses and ground vines had so overgrown it that only the broad scars on the tree trunks, where the lumberman’s axe had blazed them for a sign, served to distinguish it from a score of radiating vistas.

— Charles G.D. Roberts from The Heart of the Ancient Wood, 1900

When you make a pact with yourself that you will never take a job that doesn’t entail some sort of wilderness travel, it narrows your options down considerably. It also compromises your ability to make decent money — if that’s what’s important to you. For me it was the quest for adventure, the open trail, and no boundaries. Money would eventually trickle in somewhere along the way. Survival had a dual meaning — surviving in the bush and surviving in the mainstream. Unfortunately, my wilderness skills evolved quicker than my ability to adjust to civil living.

It’s one thing to seek out adventure for personal recreation and satisfaction, but when you make a vocation of it, the dynamics change considerably. Suddenly there are clients to look after, and responsibilities and expectations, and it’s no longer a vacation. Well, it is and it isn’t; you try to make it as enjoyable as possible, sometimes against incredible odds. The one thing I’ve learned along the trail is that you will encounter the unusual, the unexpected, and the untalented. Through all of this, I remain a student of Nature, and recoil at the assertion that I may be anything better than this, or an expert in any field. I am a dedicated survivalist; however, I prefer not to be called that. My ultimate goal for myself, for my family, and inevitably for those who choose to travel in the wilderness with me, is to submit to the pleasures of backwoods travel instead of fighting the elements that define it.

There have been good adventures, and there have been adventures I’d sooner forget. Things happen that you don’t expect while wandering through paradise, and they have to be dealt with accordingly. The unwritten laws have not changed for the modern adventurer. Trails and Tribulations explores the more obtuse adventure, the senselessness of wilderness politics, and the sometimes psychotic behaviour of the self-seeker.

ONE

CONFESSIONS OF A PARK RANGER

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

— Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895)

Before living the quixotic life of a park ranger, I was living the quixotic life but without the steady government paycheque. From the time I finished high school, to the time I was put on payroll as a park technician, I spent six summers, from break-up to freeze-up, in the canoe, doing what any normal, intransigent youth would be doing, I supposed, and it had nothing to do with what was expected of me.

In my renovated chicken-shed-cum-studio, perched on the brim of a hill in the tiny hamlet of Laskay, Ontario, I did my artwork. My mentor Jack McBride, a retired printer, had taken me under his wing and gifted me with the use of his country property, located well outside the dirty fringe of Toronto. There was an adjoining cottage but I preferred the chicken shed as it was easier to heat in the winter. In return for this rather splendid asylum, I supplied him with illustrations for various printing jobs. Also retired were various archaic printing presses that found a home in his basement; together we had quite a business percolating, making assorted greeting cards, hasty notes, posters, and bar mitzvah invitations.

There are no traffic jams on the way to work.

The winter snows piled up against the tiny, un-insulated shack as I scribbled out design after design, persevering, thinking of nothing but the coming spring, saving just enough to grubstake six months of canoeing. In May, when the ice was out, I would be gone.

Forty dollars was enough money to buy supplies each month, as long as I baked (actually fried) my own trail bread — bannock, or what the Anishnabek called buck-way-ja-gin. I would also have to fish every other day, eat fresh-water clams (I never liked the rubbery, gritty taste) and pick berries — a veritable feast. Trail fare was simple, life was straightforward and uncomplicated but nothing was prosaic or even predictable. In my early twenties I felt that I could do anything, except, and undeniably so, settle into a conventional lifestyle. After all, I had built cabins and spent the winter in the bush with a school friend, had near-death experiences, been shot at (shot back), been chased by grizzlies and Wyoming buffalo, mauled by wild dogs, climbed a mountain in my bare feet, lost the end of my toe to frostbite, survived a pub-night in Lourdes du Blanc Sablon, been a house-guard for singer Anne Murray, and worked only when I needed money. How could my life become any more idealistic?

But every so often in life as we amble down whatever path we choose to follow, there appears a door, slightly ajar, a shaft of light radiating from the aperture, mystery beyond, opportunity but not without circumstance. I could never resist. It was like discovering a new trail wending its way to somewhere and I needed to know where it would take me … the quest. In 1976 I banged on the local government forestry door in Temagami, Ontario. No longer the Department of Lands and Forests but conspicuously more officious, it was now the Ministry of Natural Resources office, buzzing with salaried timber cruisers, district foresters, game wardens, and lands and parks administrators. A woman at the front desk directed me to the lands supervisor, Reg Sinclair.

You want to do what? Sinclair smiled inquisitively. I was fully prepared to be rejected, or ejected from his office. I want to produce a canoe guidebook for Temagami, I explained somewhat timidly, expecting a quick dismissal. Sinclair spun around in his chair and looked out the window at Lake Temagami, taking an inordinately long time to proffer an answer. And you would chart out all the canoe routes, portages, and campsites? he questioned. I showed him what I wanted to do on a regional map — to compile all linear recreation trails and canoe routes in a book format that could be used for in-house management and service front-desk inquiries about canoeing in Temagami. But that wasn’t the real reason for being there; logging companies had begun accelerated clear-cut operations and were encroaching on my beloved wilderness. Temagami was known for its pine stands, a much valued timber resource. I had this grandiose idea that if I were to document all the threatened canoe routes and publish a guidebook, that backcountry adventure-seekers would flock to Temagami, thereby thwarting the wave of extraction-based industry intrusions. The environmental